BMW Traps A Car Thief By Remotely Locking His Doors (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal... Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (November 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," wrote Jonah Spangenthal-Lee [deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department].

The suspect found a key fob mistakenly left inside the BMW by a friend who'd borrowed the car from the owner and the alleged crime was on. But technology triumphed. When the owner, who'd just gotten married a day earlier, discovered the theft, the police contacted BMW corporate, who tracked the car to Seattle's Ravenna neighborhood.
The 38-year-old inside was then booked for both auto theft and possession of methamphetamine.

Comments

Happy ending, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for the guy who got his car back, and good that they put the would be thief away, but still, can't say I much like the idea that our corporate overlords can track your car (and therefore movements) and remotely lock down your vehicle.

See???

[93 Escort Wagon]

This incredibly rare set of circumstances is exactly why we should happily and unquestioningly give our freedoms and privacy away to corporations and to the government!

I call bullshit.

[Heebie]

Pulling the door opener lever on the door of a car overrides the locking mechanisms. This is a fire-safety requirement. The guy was probably just still asleep when the cops found the car.

Re: I call bullshit.

[Hachima]

Page 38 of the manual states "Do not lock the vehicle from the outside with people inside the car, as the vehicle cannot be unlocked from inside without special knowledge." So if the car was remotely locked this would be the case. The owner of the car could have initiated the outside lock with the BMW Remote Control App. You have to press the lock button from inside the car to allow someone from the inside the car to unlock it.

Dangerous

[stooo]

People died while being locked in cars.
Two examples are : car fallen in the water, and people sleeping in a car while owner and friend locked it. The owner came back after a long hot weeken, his friend was dead inside.
Double lock is a dangerous feature.

Re: Dangerous

[Drethon]

who are you going to trust. have to trust some.

I'll trust the company that leaves the decisions in my hands, rather than taking them away from me.

Re:Dangerous

[mjwx]

Suppose it depends on the water depth. I know I'd rather not wait for the cabin to flood if I were sinking in a lake. You might be pretty deep before you could get the door open and try to swim to the surface.

You more or less have to. The pressure difference means that you wont be able to open the doors. Its the same phenomena that prevents you from opening aeroplane doors mid flight.

I believe that both Top Gear and Mythbusters did a segment on it.

Oldsmobile invented this

[Vinegar Joe]

Their R&D center was located on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. After a tragic accident as a result of Soviet hacking, Oldsmobile closed the center in 1969.

What danger ?

[DrYak]

In an emergency, you're supposed to be able to break a car's side windows.

I supposed the "sun-cooked" guy had passed out (alcohol ? heat shock, while he was asleep ?) before realising he should get out of the car.

I'm more surprised that the thief didn't try to break out of the car. But, on the other hand the lock has happened while he was napping inside the car, so he might not have realised what had happened and did not release he should run away as fast as possible before the police arrives.

I would be much more worried about the remote disabling of the car :
- was some form of owner's access required in order to do the disabling ? (i.e.: the owner's second fob is needed in order to validate the instruction to lock and ignore the stolen fob ?)
- or does any sufficiently high executive at BMW have the power to shut down any random car ?

Also : is the remote access limited to very simple instruction (locking doors and revoking fobs - which as mentioned above shouldn't be dangerous except under special circumstances) or can the car be remotely shut down while it is driving ?

Re:so what?

[geekmux]

I don't see why this is a story on Slashdot

Then you must not be thinking of the children. Or terrorists. Oh, and don't forget about children and terrorists.

This story sounds like nothing on the surface, right up until you realize that BMW can track their cars remotely and execute remote operations on them (this was just a teaser of their remote capabilities most likely).

From hacking that system to legal "justifications" sans warrants, this is a privacy and security nightmare.

But hey, carry on...nothing to see here according to the ignorant masses who have been trained that way. Simply because most "gadgets" these days are a privacy and security nightmare doesn't dismiss that fact, or the consequences.

I for one was rather baffled over the keyfob left in the car. My 8-year old car would not automatically lock the doors if it sensed the keyfob inside, so I'm assuming the car was left unlocked with the keyfob. Fail all around.